How to quickly forget a person. How to intentionally forget something

Most often, the recollection of something unpleasant becomes obsessive (painfully obsessive) due to anticipated anxiety: a person begins to fear that traumatic memories will again “emerge” from memory, and the more he is afraid of this, the more obsessive and brighter they become.

A person who is obsessively traumatized by a memory (or group of memories) describes these memories in detail on paper; they can be represented in the form of mental pictures, a moving video sequence or a video film (here the school experience of writing an "essay on a picture" can be useful). This process can be unpleasant, but it itself often produces a psychotherapeutic effect: a person does not suppress memories, including all kinds of defense mechanisms, but, describing them, frees himself from these memories. Then a piece of paper with memories is placed on a fireproof base (for example, in an ashtray) and set on fire. At this moment, it is important to look at the fire, to see how experiences that relate to certain events of the past burn out, how traumatic memories turn to ash and crumble. All negative things burned out in flames! Ashes thrown out the window and scattered in the wind!

Of course, such an exercise will not in all cases lead to the obligatory elimination (removal) of negative memories from memory so that it will be impossible to remember them. The meaning of the exercise is that it allows a person to become the master of their memories... He can transfer them to paper and burn them at any time, which means he ceases to be afraid of them. If a person ceases to be afraid of memories, then they cease to acquire an obsessive form and, ultimately, stop coming altogether.

Often, with a well-developed imagination, a person can really, with the help of a "burning letter" completely and irrevocably destroy any unwanted memories. Fire acts magnetically on a person, providing a cathartic, "psycho-cleansing" effect. Ever since the time of Homo habilis ("a man of skill"), fire played the role of the first psychotherapist in human history: looking into the fire, a person, in fact, underwent a psychotherapeutic session, freeing himself from his heavy thoughts and clearing himself of "primitive stresses." If a person is able to vividly imagine that not only paper, but also his memories are burned, then he will not be able to reproduce them even if he wants to. “I try to remember, but I can’t, I see only crumbling ash” - this is sometimes said after doing this exercise.

Another effective exercise is called “ television "... This exercise is often used in psychotherapy. It works like this:

A person tries to reproduce his negative experiences as vividly as possible, presenting them on a large TV screen. Then he mentally picks up the remote and mutes the sound. After that, the original "film" is viewed again, but without sound. The color is now turned off; The “film” is viewed again, but in black and white. The same manipulations are performed with contrast and brightness. Eventually, the image disappears completely. The person wants to watch the "movie" again, but sees only a dark screen. For an extra boost in your imagination, you can unplug the power plug and throw the TV out the window.

If the traumatic memories are not tragic, but simply unpleasant, then using the TV exercise you can turn them into a comedy and laugh at them. Where there is sincere laughter, there is no place for neurosis. Imagine that the unpleasant events that once happened to you are recorded on video. In your imagination, you can view the "recording" at high speed, start it in the opposite direction, turn on the slow-motion mode, and stop it in the "freeze-frame" mode. Try mentally overlaying funny music on the “recording”, introduce comic characters into the “recording”. If you can become the director of your memories, then you will manage them, not them you.

This exercise also does not guarantee complete forgetting, but it helps to stop being afraid of memories... By eliminating the fear of unpleasant memories, we eliminate the cause of their obsessive appearances.

Another strategy of flying techniques is aimed at removal from memory of information that has lost its relevance and cluttering the "archive". For example, you can free mnemonic matrices from the used information content in order to fill them with new material. Let's consider some of the technical methods for doing this.

One of the simplest methods is called "Summer technical rag".

For example, we filled in any mnemonic matrix (road, room, "alphabet", etc.) with a number of words, or rather, with a series of images formed on the basis of words. You can erase these images in the opposite way to their creation. We turn to the “place” No. 1 of the matrix, where the image or the figurative group is located. We mentally take a large damp cloth and erase this image. “Place” No. 1 remains, we continue to see it in all its details, but it is empty, free and new associative compositions can be placed on it. Then we sequentially, from “place” to “place”, go through the entire matrix and erase all other images in a similar way. If it is unethical or not good to erase any images with a rag even mentally, then as vividly as possible we imagine how these images disappear by themselves. They dissolve like morning mist, or they just go away.

As a professional mnemonist and performing on the stage in front of the public with intellectual attractions, Solomon Shereshevsky was forced not only to memorize huge rows of words, numbers, incoherent syllables, etc., but also to erase all this from memory before the next session. Sometimes, in one day, Shereshevsky performed several concerts in the same hall, using the same matrix.

Here is how he did it: “I am afraid that some sessions will not get confused. Therefore, I mentally erase the board and, as it were, cover it with a film that is completely opaque and impenetrable. I sort of take this tape away from the board and hear its crunch. When the session ends, I mentally remove the film ... I talk, and at this time my hands seem to wrinkle this film. " Thus, Shereshevsky erased information immediately from the entire space of the mnemonic matrix, and not from each of its separate "places."

In cases where this method did not help to effectively forget information, Shereshevsky resorted to seemingly paradoxical flight techniques - to records on paper of the information that was to be forgotten: “In order to remember, people write down ... It was funny to me, and I decided in my own way: since he wrote down, then he does not need to remember. So if I write it down, I will know that there is no need to remember. .. And I started to apply it in small things: in phones, in surnames, in some errands. "

Here we find a very important thought: "If you wrote it down, then there is no need to remember"... This is one of the reasons why most people consider their memory to be bad. In an effort to record important information for oneself, a person, as a rule, does not memorize it, but writes it down. Thereby, writing more, he uses less of his memory... Without receiving the necessary load, memory works less and less, and this is a direct path to its atrophy. Ultimately, a person comes to the conclusion that his memory is useless, although he himself drove himself into this amnestic impasse.

Trust your memory: try not to use notebooks, "load" your memory so that it can work, and it will never let you down. Write something down only when you need to forget it!

The process of mastering mnemonic (as well as lettetechnical) methods proceeds in full accordance with the laws of Hegel's dialectics. At some point, the quantitative accumulation of the skills of voluntary memorization and voluntary forgetting leads to a qualitative leap, to "mnemonic insight", which allows memorizing and forgetting without using special methods, only due to volitional attitudes.

Thus, for effective memory operation, it is necessary to be able not only to reliably memorize, store and reproduce any information, but also to forget it if necessary, since the quality of mnemonic processes is ensured by the interconnection of all four memory functions.

Choose some unpleasant memory (for this exercise, it is enough to imagine, for example, a scary episode from a horror movie) and mentally carry out the following manipulations with it:

Imagine that you see this event (or a fragment of a movie) on a cinema screen. Resize the "frame". Make it long and narrow. Now try increasing the size as much as possible. After that, reduce the image to the size of a point.

Return the image to its original dimensions. Make it as bright and colorful as possible. Now reduce the color intensity to black and white. Present the image in green only. Then - in blue. In orange.

Try to reduce the contrast of the image so that the shapes and background are completely indistinguishable.

Try to "run" the image in the opposite direction. Stop the "frame". Now preview the image, varying the viewing speed several times from very fast to very slow.

Sound the image. Make the sound as loud as possible. Decrease the volume gradually until it disappears completely.

We restore all the original image parameters: color, brightness, contrast, speed, sound. Turn off the sound smoothly. Stop the image. We reduce the intensity of color, brightness. We remove the contrast to a complete "blur". Disable the image. A white screen remains. Reduce it to the size of a white point. The dot dissipates in the air like a smoke ring. The memory is gone ...

For many people, the problem of developing memory and skills memorizing and assimilating texts is more relevant than the ability to forget the past and get rid of unnecessary information.

Today, there are many advertisements in newspapers, on television and on the Internet, headlines and announcements of which are full of promises to improve and restore memory. Anyone today can independently and easily find a lot of useful information about how to develop memory... But for the effective work of our memory, it is necessary not only the ability to reliably memorize, store and, if necessary, reproduce the necessary information. It is also important to be able to forget it.

In mnemonics (methods and ways to facilitate memorization), there are special techniques designed to deliberately forget. And indeed, why, if there is involuntary and voluntary memorization, can forgetting be only involuntary?

So the set of methods and techniques of the ability to forget is called flying technique. The origin of this word has its origins in Greek mythology. Lethe is a river of oblivion located in the underworld of Hades. The souls who arrived in the kingdom of the dead, having tasted the water from this river, received oblivion and no longer remembered their earthly existence. Hence the expression came - to sink into oblivion, meaning a traceless disappearance and oblivion.

What is the use of flying technology and its laws of forgetting? When are they needed?

First of all, answering these questions, it should be said that forgetting is not definitely a negative quality of human memory, since the functioning of mnemonic processes without forgetting processes will be defective. It would be appropriate to recall the words of the outstanding Soviet psychologist Alexander Romanovich Luria - “ Many are working on how to find ways to remember better? But no one even thinks about the question: how best to forget?»

In this article, we will look at the most effective ways that help a person forget the past, which has a traumatic effect on his psyche, and learn how to forget information that has lost its relevance.

Forgetting techniques can be used in at least two ways:

• In order to suppress unpleasant memories, especially those that have become obsessively repetitive.
• In order to erase unnecessary information from memory, which simply clutters up our brain.

Forgetting Method # 1 - Suppression

This summer technique has a psychotherapeutic focus, with its help you can forget memories traumatizing the psyche.

Often, the memory of unpleasant events haunts people, and they begin to fear that these traumatic memories will again begin to "emerge" and the more they are afraid of this, the more these fears become more obsessive... To relieve obsession (involuntary obsessive thoughts), you can use an exercise called "burning letter":

• Describe in detail the memories that make you suffer and feel uncomfortable and transfer them to a piece of paper. Then take this sheet, crumple it up and place it in some fireproof dish, set it on fire. Watching how the paper burns, think about how your experiences burn, how they crumble and turn into ash. All negative memories burned out! Throw the ashes out the window and blow them in the wind!

The meaning of the "burning letter" exercise is that it helps not only to forget information, but to become the master of your memories. A person experiencing unpleasant sensations from past events can thus forget them. Of course this forgetting process can be unpleasant, but often it gives the desired effect: a person does not turn on defense mechanisms, does not suppress memories, but on the contrary, describing these events gets rid of the memories associated with them.

Since ancient times, fire played the role of the first for a human psychotherapist: looking at the flame, a person, in fact, underwent a session of psychotherapy, clearing himself of heavy thoughts and throwing off the burden of primitive stresses from his shoulders. And if a person has a good imagination, and he is able to vividly imagine that not just paper, but also memories traumatizing his psyche, are burning in the fire, then he will not be able to reproduce them even if he wants to.

"TV" is another exercise often used by psychologists and psychotherapists in their practice to rid the patient of his burdensome memories:

• Try to transfer your negative experiences to the screen of a large TV as vividly as possible. Remember everything to the smallest detail. Then take the remote control, and mentally turning off the sound, watch the "silent movie". Further, in a similar way, deprive the visualization of clarity, contrast, and, finally, brightness. Eventually, the image fades and disappears completely. The main thing is not to rush! To make the forgetting process more effective, you can mentally unplug the cord from the outlet or throw the TV out of the window. If negative memories are not so tragic (say, just unpleasant), then this exercise can be used to translate them into the genre of comedy. Imagine these events recorded on a video camera. Mentally start the recording in the opposite direction, scroll it at high speed, use slow motion, put funny music on the picture, introduce a comedian into the "movie", etc. Learning how to direct your memories will make it easier for you to manage them. Moreover, where there is humor, there is no place for neurosis.

These exercises may not help you get rid of your memories completely, but they will teach you not to be afraid of them. And this is very important, because by eliminating the fear of negative memories, we eliminate the cause of their involuntary appearance.

Forgetting Method # 2 - Removal

Other forgetting technique is designed to remove unnecessary information from memory that has lost its relevance and clutters the "archive" of memory. For example, it is possible to release mnemonic matrices from already applied information material in order to fill them with new content.

Simplest forgetting method called " flying technical rag».

• For example, we populated the memory matrix with a series of word-based images. Then, focusing our attention on the first cell of the matrix, we take a wet rag and erase the image (shaped group) in it. The first cell remains, we continue to see it clearly, but now it is empty, the space is free and now it is possible to place new associative compositions on it. Next, we sequentially, cell by cell, go through the entire matrix and erase all the remaining images using a similar method.

It should be noted that this method is not entirely convenient if the mnemonic matrices are large. After all, it will take a lot of time and effort to consistently erase information from each individual cell. In such cases, it is appropriate to apply the laws of forgetting Solomon Veniaminovich Shereshevsky, a Russian-Soviet journalist and professional mnemonist, who, speaking with intellectual numbers in front of a huge audience, was forced not only to memorize large sequences of numbers, words, incoherent syllables, etc., but also to erase everything this is from memory before the next view.

• « Worried so that the individual sessions would not get confused, I mentally erase the board and, as it were, cover it with a film that is completely hopeless and impenetrable. When the session ends, I mentally film it ... I still talk with the audience, and at this time, I sort of crumple this film with my hands, hearing how it crunches."- Shereshevsky shared his secrets. So he removed information immediately from the entire field of the mnemonic matrix, and not from each of its individual cells. If this method did not help to effectively forget information, Solomon Veniaminovich, at first glance, resorted to paradoxical methods of forgetting: “ In order to remember, people write down ... It seemed ridiculous to me, and I decided to do it my own way: since they write down, therefore, they do not need to remember. This means that if I write down, I will know that I do not need to remember this ... And I began to apply this law of forgetting in small things: in any assignments, in surnames, in telephones».

In an effort to remember important information, most people tend to write it down. And the more often we write down what we want to remember, the less we use our memory. This is a direct path to memory atrophy, because not getting enough workload, it works less and less. As a result, people come to the sad conclusion that they have a bad memory, although they themselves are often to blame for this.

Try not to use notebooks and notebooks, trust your memory, load it so that it can fully work ( exercises for the development of memory), and then she will stop letting you down. Only mark something on paper if you need to forget it!

The process of mastering the skills of forgetting (as well as memorizing) proceeds in consistency with the laws of Hegel's dialectics. At a certain point, the experience of voluntary forgetting leads to a qualitative leap, which allows you to forget unnecessary information only through willpower without the use of special forgetting methods.

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